


before they turn the summer into dust

by endofthought



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-14 17:26:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18056888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofthought/pseuds/endofthought
Summary: The first time around, they created the apocalypse. This time, they must prevent it.





	1. Chapter 1

Ben used to breathe. Monsters lived under his skin, and in some ways, he was happier than all of them. Not better off, but happier. He liked to read on the stairs, off to one side with his head resting on a rail so that when people walked by they didn’t have to ask him to move out of the way. There, he could hear noises all through the house.

Ben was seventeen when he died. Seventeen-year-olds don’t know jack shit. At nearly thirty, his siblings are much more solid people, whether or not they realize it.

Who would know better than him? He thinks that if he had lived to hold Vanya’s book in useful hands he could have offered a companion tome. For so much of his childhood, it felt like he was only there to watch. Even Reginald Hargreeves with his legendary ego knew there was nothing he could do to control Ben's monsters. That was always an undercurrent of tension during training sessions- it was all wasted on him. There was no art or skill to what Ben could do. Just horror.

However little control Ben felt like he had back then, he has nothing now. For twelve years, he's been nothing except a voice in Klaus' ear, nearly always ignored. 

But finally, when they need him most, he makes contact. The moon falls, Ben grasps Klaus’ shoulder, and they are all small again, all young. Air fills his lungs.

* * *

They fall out of time on the concert hall stage, hitting hard. Coming into his live body after a decade of being dead is unsettling enough without the effects of time travel taking hold at the same instant. Ben spends several moments curled up on his side, eyes screwed shut. He wheezes.

Gradually, he becomes aware of his siblings around him. He hears a wordless voice near him- Allison, unmistakably, testing out her newly healed vocal cords. Ben opens his eyes and finds himself on the edge of the stage facing the skylight. It’s the morning.

“We’re alive,” Diego says.

“I didn’t know I could do that,” Five replies. He sounds stunned and exhausted.

Ben uncurls to sit up but before he can someone is already pulling him to them and he finds himself looking over their shoulder. Allison. She has crawled over to him and he holds her for a long moment before Diego says “Ben?!” and then he is there too, his arms wrapped around them both, limbs so much longer than theirs at this age. Ben had always been small as a kid, though never as small as Vanya.

“Is Vanya okay?” Allison gasps, as if she could hear Ben's thought. She lets go of him, scrambling to grab her sister’s wrist.

Ben grips tighter to Diego and looks at them all. Vanya is pale on the floor, still unconscious. Luther is staring at Ben, mouth wide open. Five leans back on his elbows, looking more wiped than Ben has ever seen him. He meets Ben’s gaze and smiles, though it is small. Once upon a time, they had been close, or at least closer than Five had been with their other siblings. Finally, Ben finds Klaus, up on his knees, clutching his ribs, and looking from sibling to sibling with a dazed expression.

“She’s okay,” Allison reports. “I think.”

“Are- are we all kids?” Luthor asks. His voice sounds like it did when Ben first attuned himself to it, ready to take commands.

“I warned you,” Five says. There is no bite to it.

Diego pushes Ben back, keeping one hand on his shoulder. “You saved us- in the seats.”

“We did-” Ben chokes out, looking at Klaus, emotion rising suddenly at once and oh. He has forgotten how bodily emotions are. It’s not just his thoughts. He feels it.

“And you saved me,” Diego continues. “B-back at the house. It really was you.”

“Five, when are we?” Luthor demands. He looks down at his arms, skinny and human. Ben realizes they’re all in their old academy uniforms. How? Why?

Five hauls himself to his feet with new purpose. “We need to get out of here before someone finds us, and we need a newspaper.”

“Wait,” Allison says. “We don’t know where we’re going, and we’ll look suspicious carrying Vanya.”

Five shakes his head and clasps his fists like he does before he travels, but the small pulse fades quickly. “Damn,” he said. “I’m wiped.”

Ben’s entire body pricks with pins and needles, but he stands anyway and looks at Klaus and Five, the only people who could plausibly have an answer for him. “I don’t understand how I’m alive.”

Klaus looks down at his hands. “I didn’t…” His voice is faint.

“Ben,” Luthor says. He stumbles forward and nearly lifts Ben off his feet with the force of his hug. His skin is warm, and Ben shivers in response.

Suddenly, there is a loud bang at the back of the auditorium. Ben and Luthor separate and turn to see an unfamiliar man in a suit standing there, mouth agape. He raises his hand as if he is about to say something but stumbles over his words.

“Scatter!” Luthor hisses at them, stumbling forward to scoop Vanya back into his arms. “Regroup at the library!” It should, in theory, be three blocks from where they are now.

The man has regained his voice. “You kids can’t be in here!” he shouts. At least, for whatever reason, he has not recognized them.

Ben drops off the edge of the stage and bolts for the glowing red exit sign to his left as the man comes charging up the aisles. It’s better than hitmen in gas masks, but Ben ducks his head to hide his face all the same.

He runs through a short hallway and pounds the bar of the side exit. He steps out onto the sidewalk, stumbling as the daylight hits him. The sun is high in the sky. Whenever they are, it’s midday and humid. Something in Ben’s chest stirs in a way it hasn’t for a very long time. The door bursts back open with the pound of the metal bar collapsing and Klaus nearly hits him with the door, a wild look in his eyes. He has followed Ben out of the building.

“C’mon!” Ben shouts, taking Klaus’ skinny wrist in his hand and pulling him along without turning back to look, because he can’t think right now. They have to run, and Ben has always trailed behind his siblings in athletic feats, save swimming (where he is bested only by Diego).

They run downhill, bottoms of their shoes hitting the pavement, for a block and a half. Ben nearly takes out one half of a couple who aren’t willing to release their clasped hands. Judging by the man's style of clothing, it’s the early 2000s. Maybe their age corresponds correctly with the time period? If so, will they run into their real selves?

“Hey!” Klaus shouts with a gasp, breaking Ben’s train of thought. “Hey, hey, hey.” He pulls them aside into an alley next to a cafe, pressing his back up against the building. Ben mimics his motion.

“You’re solid,” Klaus says. He reaches out with a trembling hand, laying it on Ben’s shoulder, and Ben doesn’t hesitate to place his opposite hand over it.

“I’m alive,” he says, and Klaus sobs. He bends over, loose hand going to his knee.

“Klaus, we have to go,” Ben says. “The others are waiting-” but before he can continue Klaus hugs him. Ben has wanted to do this so many times in the past thirteen years.

“It’s fine,” Klaus says and for the first time in a while Ben thinks it just might be. “It’s okay.”

So for a single, vivid moment, Ben relaxes under his brother’s grip and breathes.


	2. Chapter 2

When Klaus was high- _really_ high- he had a tendency to forget that Ben was dead. That, or he just didn’t care. He made plans for them with no regard to what was actually possible, as if Ben still had a beating heart.

They used to be such a pair. The pattern was always the same. When they hung out, Klaus escalated into mischief and Ben desperately tried to stop him once he went too far, sometimes wrapping their other siblings into it. Either things worked themselves out or they all got in trouble with Dad. That was until Five left, of course, when things all twisted a little darker.

If there is such a thing as purgatory, it must be Ben’s ghostly existence. He was always repeating that habit from his childhood with Klaus, going through the motions of a different time when they both were happier.

Now, Ben can’t help but halt their staggering run to spin in a circle, taking in the world of his childhood once more. He has forgotten how the world feels, but he has also forgotten what it’s like to be this short. The city looks different from this perspective.

“This is so weird,” he pants to Klaus, who has replaced his earlier shock with giddiness. He seems utterly unfazed by the reintroduction to his thirteen-year-old body.

“There!” Klaus shouts, nudging him toward the side entrance of the library.

“There’s nobody following us,” Ben says, slowing to a walk. If they burst through the front doors like this they’ll attract unneeded attention.

“Luther didn’t say where,” Klaus says, and Ben shakes his head.

“There’s a conference room on the fourth floor. It’s a rendezvous from back in the old days. Don’t you remember?”

“No, actually. Why did we have a rendezvous at the library?”

“In case...nevermind,” Ben says. He smooths down the front of his jacket. There had been so many plots they’d prepared for, so many plans they pre-memorized. At least this is useful.

The woman at the front desk nods at Ben when he smiles at her. Ben was always like that. He, more so than the rest of them, could get adults to trust him with one look, no matter how inherently suspicious his siblings were acting around him.

There are elevators off to the side of the lobby that they bypass for the back stairwell. Ben hasn’t seen any of his other siblings since the auditorium, and the anxiety in his chest rises when they burst into the conference room to find it empty.

“Relax,” Klaus says when Ben shoots him what must be a panicked look. “We must be the quickest, for once.” He throws himself into one of the rolling chairs surrounding the large oak table. There are no laptop hookups around, just plugs in the walls, further evidence that they’ve been thrown back to their teenage years temporally as well as physically.

Ben shakes as the adrenaline starts to wear off and looks through one of the windows separating them from the rest of the floor. “Stay here,” he says to Klaus. He walks over to one of the shelves and pulls off a few hefty books- compendiums of an old literary magazine. It would do the trick.

He returns to the conference room as a familiar warp of space deposits Five on top of the table, clutching a newspaper in one fist.

“It’s the summer before I leave,” he says. “A few weeks before we go public. I think I understand.”

“Well I sure don’t, so feel free to fill us in!” Klaus exclaims, kicking his feet up onto another chair. At least it’s not the table.

“We’re replacing our old selves,” he says. “We must be. The Handler always said the apocalypse is supposed to happen- but it can’t. We have to-” He looks around as if he has just noticed they’re missing half the family. “Where are they?”

“Still coming,” Ben responds. “We hope. Did you see anyone get caught?”

Five crawls down off the table to pace alongside the windows. “We’re screwed,” he says. “We’re so fucking screwed.”

“Hey,” Ben says, not because he disagrees, but because he spots the rest of their siblings coming around the corner. Vanya is still pale, but walking unassisted. Ben doesn’t hear but sees her gasp when they lock eyes.

This is it. After so long, they are all together again, alive and fully present. Ben is the one who steps forward to embrace her when she opens the door, initiating contact for the first time.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs over his shoulder after a long moment, presumably not to him but to all of them. “I didn’t mean to.”

“We know,” Allison reassures. She steps past Vanya into the room and Luthor and Diego follow her. Diego, catching onto Ben’s plan, hefts open one of the books, coughing. Ben pats Vanya’s back.

“Five,” Luthor says. “What the hell is-”

“It’s 2002,” Five says. “I could be wrong, but we might be here for a while.”

“How long?” Luthor demands.

“Until 2003,” Five replies. “And so on.”

“All those people in the future-” Allison begins.

“I don’t know.” Five shakes his head. Some of the exhaustion Ben saw earlier crept back into his expression.

“We all have some explaining to do,” Diego says. He reaches over and pokes Klaus hard in the chest. “What was _that_ back there?!”

Vanya releases Ben, one hand going up to swipe at her eyes and her bangs in one motion. She turns to face the rest of her siblings. “I need to explain,” she says. “But I don’t understand all of it myself.”

Ben guides her into one of the chairs and sits down next to her. “That’s okay,” he says. “We’ll start from the beginning.”


End file.
